[WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:43 PM, David Levy <lifeisunfair at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> What established framework are you talking about, here?
>
> I'm referring to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (and more
> importantly, the underlying principles).
>
> An editor, acting in good faith, might believe that creating pages for
> dictionary definitions or dessert recipes improves the encyclopedia.
> Does this mean that we're required to refrain from intervening?  Of
> course not.

Of course not.  You should revert the editor's changes.

> IAR is one of our most important policies, but it isn't a license to
> dismiss others' concerns.  Perhaps a one-off exception to our
> vandalism policy *would* improve the encyclopedia, but it isn't
> Gwern's place to unilaterally determine this and disregard requests to
> seek consensus.

It wasn't vandalism.  The vandalism policy is clear about this.  It is
not vandalism, but it is prohibited:  "What is not vandalism" "Editing
tests by experimenting users:  Users sometimes edit pages as an
experiment. Such edits, while prohibited, are treated differently from
vandalism. "

> "Obviously I did all my editing as an anon: if even an anonymous IP
> can get away this kind of blatant vandalism just by invoking the name
> WP:EL, then that's a lower bound on how much an editor can get away
> with."

Thanks for this.  I guess he called it vandalism.  Unless he's been
lying about his motive, he was wrong, though.

>> As I said before, the experiment wouldn't have been at all accurate if
>> he had consulted beforehand.  People would have been on the lookout
>> for the removal of external links by IP addresses.
> [....]
> If not, another option was to consult the WMF.  (I've noted this several times.)

I doubt that would have worked.  And it's not a good use of WMF
employee time anyway.  The new TOS is pretty clear that WMF doesn't
want to get involved in such minutiae.

> You weren't aware that we generally frown upon edits intended to
> reduce articles' quality?

I believe the intent was to improve articles' quality.

> And again, we're quibbling over terminology.

Fair enough.